books that shaped me

This is a necromancy of an old meme I found on Torque Control.  I've often tried to make lists like this - this one seems structured enough to work, so I'll give it a shot. 

6
Just So Stories, Rudyard Kipling
The Owl and the Pussycat, Edward Lear
People, Peter Spier
The Lion and the Gypsy, Geoffrey Patterson
The Prince and the Pauper (abridged), Mark Twain

8
The Hobbit, J. R. R. Tolkien
Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, Lewis Carroll
The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame
The Jungle Book (abridged), Rudyard Kipling
Clever Polly and the Stupid Wolf etc., Catherine Storr
Fairytales, Terry Jones
Nothing to Be Afraid Of, Jan Mark [a hidden gem]
The BFG, Matilda, The Witches etc, Roald Dahl
A lot of Goosebumps, R. L. Stein [particularly Ghost Beach, It Came From Beneath The Sink, Welcome to Dead House, and especially Be Careful What You Wish For and The Ghost Next Door, which made me cry]

10
Little House on the Prairie series, Laura Ingalls Wilder
Caddie Woodlawn, Carol Ryrie Brink
Voyage of the Dawn Treader and The Silver Chair, C. S. Lewis
The Far Side anthologies, Gary Larson
Peter Pan, J. M. Barrie
A Wind in the Door, Madeleine L'Engle
Insane amounts of Greek mythology

12-13
The Song of Roland, Unknown [shit fucked me up!]
Jurassic Park, The Lost World, and Congo, Michael Crichton
1984, George Orwell
33 Things Every Girl Should Know, ed. Tonya Bolden
Ophelia Speaks, ed. Sara Shandler
She's Come Undone, Wally Lamb
To Kill a Mocking-bird, Harper Lee

14-15
Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad
Catch-22, Joseph Heller
Macbeth and Hamlet, William Shakespeare
A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams
The Iliad and The Odyssey, Homer [shit fucked me up, volume 2 and 3!]
Lord of the Flies, William Golding
Animal Farm, George Orwell

16-17
A Passage to India, E. M. Forster
The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner
The Crossing, Cormac McCarthy
An Enemy of the People, Henrik Ibsen
Dubliners, James Joyce
Pilgrim at Tinker's Creek, Annie Dillard
The Tempest, William Shakespeare
The Shining and Pet Sematary, Stephen King
Zorba the Greek, Nikos Kazantzakis
Frankenstein, Mary Shelley

18
Season of Migration to the North, Tayeb Salih
Macho Camacho's Beat, Luis Rafael Sanchez
The Social Contract and Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men, Jean-Jacques Rousseau
The Discourses on Livy, Niccolo Machiavelli
Night Shift, Stephen King

I think one thing that's interesting here is how my independent fiction-reading drops off totally in high school - while they shaped me, all of those books were assigned (except for Heart of Darkness, sophomore year).  The only thing I read on my own time was Stephen King.  And I retained nothing out of my first semester English/Lit class in college.  I know we read books but I have no idea what.